Mahmud, Sultan of Riau and Lingga (1823-1864)
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MAHMUD, SULTAN OF RIAU AND LINGGA (1823-1864) Virginia Matheson1 The Text The life of Sultan Mahmud is described in the Tuhfat al-Nafίs (The Precious Gift), a Malay text which, according to its author, Raja Hajji Ali, is intended to relate the stories of the Malay and Bugis kings and their descendants. The work opens with a synopsis of the Sejarah Melayu and continues in more detail with the history of the kingdom of Johor. The dynamic figures in the Tuhfat are the Bugis princes, whose military skill and hard-line diplomacy won them high positions of state in Riau, Selangor, and the Borneo states of Sambas and Matan-Sukadana. A recurring theme in the first half of the Tuhfat, which covers the first half of the eighteenth century, is the conflict between the Minangkabau of Siak and the allied Bugis and Malay forces. These clashes occurred both in the Riau area and in Kedah, Selangor, Siak, and Borneo. The second half, which covers the mid-eighteenth century to 1864, portrays the developing hostility between Bugis and Malays on Riau and two major, Bugis-led confronta- tions with the Dutch at Malacca in 1756 and 1784. This last venture ended when the Dutch made a treaty with Riau in which the Sultan held his kingdom only as a fief of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), After 1818 a Dutch Resident was permanently stationed at Tanjong Pinang.2 The religious and cultural life of Riau, especially the island of Penyengat (the seat of the Bugis rulers) and of Lingga (the seat of the Malay rulers) did not seem to be at all influenced by the Dutch. The main area of traditional life which the Tuhfat does por- tray as having been subject to Dutch intervention was piracy. Both diplomatic and financial pressures were exerted by the Dutch to force the rulers to cooperate in its suppression. The scope of the Tuhfat, chronologically, geographically, and politically, is very broad. Its detailed narration of Johor history from the early eighteenth century until 1864 is interwoven with anecdotes from the history of Siak, Kedah, Selangor, Trengganu, Kelantan, and the west coast of Borneo. Where encounters with Europeans--mainly Dutch and British--are described, the accounts tally most strikingly with contemporary European versions of the same events. 1. I would like to acknowledge the help and advice I have received from Professor C. Skinner and Drs. L. Brakel. I wish to thank Dr. C. H. H. Wake, Department of History, University of Western Australia, for permission to quote from his "Nineteenth Century Johore: Ruler and Realm in Transition" (Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University, 1966). 2. The Malay spelling of places and titles has been retained in this article. 119 120 The Manuscripts There are four currently known manuscripts of the Tuhfat al- Nafis. One of these has only recently been identified as a Tuhfat text,3 and has not been incorporated into the translation which fol- lows. Of the other three manuscripts, one presents a shorter Tuhfat text, and two present a longer version. The shorter manuscript is from the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde in Leiden.* The older of the two longer manuscripts which is catalogued as the MMaxwell 2" manuscript,5 is from the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and was copied in 1890. The last manuscript is a published Jawi text, which was copied for R. 0. Winstedt some time after 1923. It was published in the Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society . 6 The translation from the Tuhfat in this article is based on the πMaxwell 2M text. This manuscript was preferred because it presents a better text than Winstedt1s. Because the longer version of the Tuhfat represents an expansion of the basic Leiden manuscript, the shorter work is preserved within the longer one. The Author It is important for an understanding of the Tuhfat to know a little of the author's background and milieu. Raja Hajji Ali was descended from the first Bugis princes who established themselves in Riau. The princes had made the office of Yangdipertuan Muda an hereditary Bugis position whereas the offices of Sultan, Bendahara, and Temenggong were left to the Malays. The Yangdipertuan Muda, holders of military power, soon held all commercial and effective political strength as well. Thus, in an effort to maintain their position in the face of the Bugis challenge, the Sultan and the Malays turned to the Dutch, the leading European power in the area. The Dutch found it in their inerests to support the Malays against the Bugis, whose domination of the Peninsula tin trade posed a real threat to Malacca. In the 1784 Dutch treaty with Riau, it was stipu- lated that there should be no Bugis Yangdipertuan Muda. In the 3. This is a manuscript in the library of the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur. It was identified by Mohfd. Khalid Saidin and noted in his article, MNaskhah2 Lama Mengenai Sejarah Negeri Johor," Dewan Bahasa, XV, No. 18 (August 1971), pp. 340-341. From a sample of four pages which he kindly sent me, it seems that this manuucript is very close to the MMaxwell 2" manuscript. 4. Catalogued by Ph. S. van Ronkel, under the title nSjadjarah Radja2 Riouw,π Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, LX (1908), p. 207. The manuscript was copied in 1896. 5. P. Voorhoeve, πList of Malay Manuscripts in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London,'1 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (April 1963), p. 68. 6. Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, X, Part 2 (1932). A romanization of Winstedtτs text was undertaken by Inche Munir bin Ali (Singapore: Malaysia Publications, 1965). This text was reviewed by C. Skinner, in the Journal of Southeast Asian History, VIII, No. 2 (1967), p. 325. 121 early nineteenth century, however, a physical withdrawal of the Sultan from Riau to Lingga forced the Dutch to carry out negotiations with the Bugis, who were reinstated as Yangdipertuan Muda at Riau, the center of Dutch activity in the area. During the nineteenth century the traditional pattern of relationships changed. The Yangdipertuan Muda chose, overtly at least, to cooperate with the Residents, while the Sultans, separated and isolated from the center of administration, became less involved in matters of policy and thus did not work close- ly with the Dutch. The author of the Tuhfat was related to all the Yangdipertuan Muda who are mentioned in the translation. He was a Muslim scholar and was on good terms with the Dutch officials of his time. Some of his other works7 indicate that he stood strongly for Malay custom in matters of dress, religion, and behavior. It would have been difficult for him to respect a young Sultan like Mahmud, who refused to follow the ad- vice of his elders, involved himself in Christian ritual (Freemasonry), and followed the customs of Europeans rather than the dictates of Islam. Sultan Mahmud We know very little about Mahmud before he became Sultan in 1841.8 It was only then that he began to exert his influence and to become a figure of note in the Riau-Lingga and Singapore world. Of his early life, we know from the Tuhfat that he was born in Trengganu. Mahmud's grandfather, Sultan Abd al-Rahman,9 offended at not being officially installed as Sultan of Lingga, left Lingga in 1821 and sailed to Trengganu with his son, Tengku Besar Muhammad. The Sultan of Trengganu, Ahmad, settled the father and son in their own kampong. Ahmad then married Sultan Abd al-Rahman to his sister and Muhammad to his daughter. Abd al-Rahman!s bride died a year later, but in 1823 his son's wife, Tengku Teh, gave birth to Mahmud. Shortly after his grandson's birth, Sultan Abd al-Rahman was brought back from Trengganu to Lingga by a Dutch ship. The regalia was restored to him in a formal installation ceremony in November 1823. Sultan Abd al-Rahman was said to have been interested only in his religious devotions,10 leaving the administration of his realm to the Yangdipertuan Muda, and to his son Muhammad. Sultan Abd al-Rahman died in August 1832 at the age of 55 or 56.ιι He was succeeded by Mahmudfs father, Sultan Muhammad who 7. See, for example, Kitab Pengetahuan Bahasa (Singapore: Al-Ahmadiah Press, 1928), which was intended to be a dictionary, but many of the definitions were used as vehicles for the authorτs moral percepts. 8. The passage chosen for translation from the Tuhfat begins with Mahmud*s succession to the full powers of the Sultanate, after the death of his father. 9. He was the younger brother of Husain, whom Raffles and Farquhar had installed as Sultan of Singapore in 1819. 10. C. van Angelbeek, "Korte Schets van het eiland Lingga en deszelfs Bewoners," Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap, XI, (1826), p. 45. 11. E. Netscher, "Beschrijving van een Gedeelte der Residentie Riouw," p 9 -yen**OTg foβ THE RIAU ARCHIPELAGO 123 became involved in Trengganu affairs. When his father-in-law died in 1826, there was a disputed succession in Trengganu and the loser, Umar, retired to Lingga, where he stayed with Sultan Muhammad. When a youth succeeded to the Trengganu throne in 1836, Umar returned, ousted him, and became Sultan. Over twenty years later, Sultan Umar was to return the favors he had received at Lingga by sheltering Sultan Muhammad's son, Mahmud, at his court in Trengganu. In about 1834 Sultan Muhammad had Mahmud circumcized and crowned Sultan.